In July last 12 months, Naver, maker of the search engine generally known as the “Google of South Korea,” opened its recent second headquarters, Naver 1784. The constructing’s name refers to a 12 months commonly related to the Industrial Revolution. Inside you’ll discover a testament to automation’s growing global influence, in the shape of 100 autonomous robots. 

The robots, called Rookies, weave out and in between people and deliver parcels, coffee and lunch to Naver’s employees, all using 5G. They even have their very own robots-only elevator, Roboport. Naver Labs, the corporate’s R&D division, launched using the brand new headquarters as a test bed for the Rookies. This November, it is going to arrange the robots in its recent data center, Gak Sejong, in South Korea.

I visited the location last 12 months, to see the robots firsthand. Rookies navigate through every inch of the headquarters, while robot arms drew pictures. Naver already owns a raft of subsidiaries, offering services like e-commerce, messaging, payments, digital comics, cloud and metaverse. And, just last week, the corporate launched its generative AI services built on its large language model HyperClova X, joining the generative AI space race. 

Does the web giant wish to broaden robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving technology beyond its existing businesses to drive its future growth? When asked about its ongoing projects, Naver says it has been working on a handful of projects on robots, autonomous driving technology and AI, via its R&D division since 2013. Six years ago, it acquired Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) in Grenoble, France, which makes a speciality of researching AI, machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing, to bolster its research and development. Post-acquisition, XRCE became Naver Labs.

The corporate believes people living in such revolutionary environments will profit from the Naver Labs projects — including robots — within the not-too-distant future. The web search engine wants to participate in the brand new type of platform, robots, which it believes could replace mobile phones someday. 

Naver Labs‘ research is aimed toward five spaces: robotics (Around, Around G and Ambidex), AI (ARC System), digital twins (Alike and Hybrid HD mapping), computer vision/augmented reality (Indoor AR Navigation and Ahead) and autonomous driving technology.  

At Naver’s AI conference last week, TechCrunch sat down with the director of Science at Naver Labs Europe (NLE), Martin Humenberger, to find out about Naver Labs’ mission and ongoing projects. 

“Our long-term vision is creating useful robots in on a regular basis lives,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch. “This includes robot assistants at home, hospitals, museums, shopping malls, airports, etc. More short-term, we deal with last-mile delivery applications in smart cities and buildings.” 

Most of its long-term projects haven’t been commercialized yet. Still, its ongoing research and latest technology are constantly applied to enhance the performance of Naver’s robots, Rookies, on the 1784 constructing and the info center, Gak. As well as, it provides a robot as a service (RaaS) to the Naver Cloud platform, Humenberger adds.

One example of RaaS is the ARC system powered by the Naver Cloud Platform. ARC, an intelligence system for robots, enables Naver’s Rookies to see, recognize and operate. ARC isn’t only a control system for robots. It’s the robots’ eye and brain, which suggests Rookies don’t require GPS access; as a substitute, the ARC eye helps them recognize their surroundings, while providing essentially the most efficient route. That’s based on Vision Group leader at Naver Labs Korea, Donghwan Lee, who leads the ARC eye project. ARC Brain, meanwhile, connects service infrastructure in real time and updates data and algorithms within the cloud for robots. Rookies on the 1784 constructing don’t need a built-in operating system due to their cloud connectivity that powers the ARC system, which controls the robots, Lee added. Naver says the ARC system can reduce the robot’s manufacturing cost and battery consumption by moving tasks robots need to treat to the cloud. 

Image Credits: Naver

Each Naver Labs in South Korea and France have some clear mutual goals, but others run in parallel, says Humenberger. The collaboration relies on information and progress sharing until they define joint objectives.

While Naver Labs Europe (NLE) focuses its research on “the basics of AI and easy methods to overcome current and future challenges in AI,” Naver Labs Korea (NLK) researches and develops robotics, systems engineering and platform engineering and operations, he adds.

The first research area of NLE is the AI technology for robotics. NLE is developing “computer vision methods for next-generation robot perception,” which helps robots understand the environment higher, and “recent methods for sequential decision making and combinational optimization, which enables the robots to navigate in unknown environments or to perform complex manipulation tasks,” Humenberger explains. NLE can also be constructing a technology that enables efficient interaction between robots and humans via language.

Image Credits: Naver Labs/ Martin Humenberger, director of Science at Naver Labs Europe

To make Naver’s robots versatile assistants, NLE advances AI-powered computer vision, machine learning for robotics and natural language processes. 

“It’s true that we count lots on AI-powered computer vision to raised understand the world (semantics and geometry), reinforcement learning to show robots to execute tasks, and natural language processing and data retrieval to make knowledge (text, images, videos, etc.) accessible to our robots,” Humenberger tells TechCrunch.

He gives an example of a concrete research activity related to foundation models for the actual world, CroCo. CroCo is a foundation model for 3D in a single image. “It’s designed to grasp the world in 3D using images,” Humenberger said, adding that it’s not for generative AI or large language models but for robotics and digital twins. “At Naver Labs, we use CroCo as a sophisticated robot perception module for tasks corresponding to localization, navigation, and interaction between human and robot.”

“Now we have a large test bed where we will develop and operate robots in the actual world, highly expert engineers and researchers, and powerful cloud infrastructure,” Humenberger explains. “It is kind of difficult to secure even one in every of these conditions, and it’s protected to say Naver is the only real company that is provided with all of them.”

NLE has greater than 100 researchers and scientists within the fields of AI, starting from core machine learning to UX, based on Humenberger. Naver Labs didn’t disclose the variety of staff in Korea resulting from confidentiality issues.

South Korean tech behemoths, corresponding to Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Doosan, are working within the pipeline of robotics development, from industrial robots to cooking, serving, and delivery robots, and ploughing capital into the robotics space. Earlier this 12 months, Samsung said it plans to roll out an EX1 robot to help elders in exercising, and its research division is developing a Samsung robot platform. Doosan Robotics, a robotics unit of the Korean manufacturing firm Doosan, has filed for an initial public offering, based on its filing.